project44 makes third acquisition of 2021, acquires Convey

Chicago-based supply chain visibility services provider project44 announced today it has acquired Austin-based Convey, a provider of delivery experience management software that helps shippers connect disparate data and processes from parcel to freight in the last mile.

The purchase price, according to project44, is $255 million, the company’s largest acquisition in its history and the third one of 2021, too, having acquired Ocean Insights and ClearMetal earlier this year.

The company said that Convey powers direct to consumer delivery experiences for more than 200 global shippers, including Walmart, The Home Depot, and Nieman Marcus, among others. And it added that Convey meshes real-time visibility, post-purchase experiences, and machine learning-powered analytics focused on improving overall customer experience.

Through this acquisition, project44 said it now connects more than 880 global shippers and third-party logistics providers with a network of 113,000 carriers, 2.6 million assets and more than 9 billion last-mile shipment events to help shippers optimize costs, grow revenue, improve speed and service and improve the delivery experience.

“project44 is solving today’s most critical business challenge—how to deliver on continuously evolving customer expectations while remaining operationally efficient during unprecedented uncertainty and growing complexity,” said Jett McCandless, CEO and founder of project44, in a statement. “Our acquisition of Convey brings project44 all the way to the front doorstep and helps our partners become more proactive and efficient so they can get people the products they want and need this holiday and beyond. The stakes are high for companies to not only fulfill and ship orders but to make the right promises about availability and delivery. However, volatile conditions, overwhelming complexity and blind spots in the supply chain make this difficult to achieve. We’ve solved this with the acquisition of Convey, making project44 the unequivocal choice for any company that wants to leverage supply chain and logistics as a competitive advantage and driver of brand loyalty.”

With Convey in the fold, project44 explained that the companies offer customers a unified offering providing value to their customers and supply chain partners in various ways, including:

• Establishing a unified view of the supply chain - from raw materials to the consumer’s door;
• Providing the same managed and superior consumer delivery experience capabilities in eCommerce to the much larger B2B market;
• Streamlining the day-to-day workflows and collaboration between shippers, sellers and carriers to optimize for reduced overhead and increased time spent on value-added work; and
• Expanding the impact of AI on the supply chain through predictive ETAs and dynamic transit times both pre-and-post purchase, powered by the industry’s most trusted, comprehensive, and high-quality transportation dataset

Adam Compain, SVP, Product Marketing & Supply Chain Insights at project44, provided LM with additional details on this deal, which follows below.

LM: What drove the need for p44 to acquire Convey?

Compain: Today, both consumers and businesses are demanding world-class customer experiences. In tandem, the demand for e-commerce continues to explode, but supply chain disruptions from raw material to consumer doorstep have never been more widespread. The impact of these disruptions, by one party or even one person in a single part of the world, are also felt by customers globally more than ever before. Therefore, it’s more important than ever to deliver excellent visibility and predictability and an exceptional customer experience end to end, from pre-purchase to post.

Convey is the leader in Delivery Experience Management, bringing both industry-leading consumer experience solutions and visibility in the last-mile. The project44 platform already delivers leading APIs and applications for Shipment Lifecycle, Transportation Visibility, and Workflow to the world’s largest enterprise. With Convey, our solutions are deepened in Customer Experience capabilities and extended all the way to the front doorstep.

LM: What made Convey attractive to p44 as an acquisition target?

Compain: Convey is the last-mile technology leader that powers exceptional direct-to-consumer delivery experiences for more than 200 of the world’s brands including The Home Depot, Neiman Marcus, and others. Convey was recognized earlier this year by Gartner as a Challenger in the Real-Time Transportation Visibility Magic Quadrant, the same Quadrant that positioned project44 as a Leader.

Convey uniquely combines real-time visibility, post-purchase experiences, and machine learning-powered analytics to improve the overall customer experience. With Convey, project 44 now serves the global supply chain end-to-end, providing real-time visibility and actionable insights to help brands deliver differentiated direct-to-consumer and eCommerce experiences for their customers.

This acquisition, our largest to date at $255 million, makes project44 the undisputable choice for retail supply chains and omnichannel fulfillment strategies. The addition of Convey extends Project44’s real-time visibility and exception management to the last mile, including parcel, courier, white-glove doorstep delivery, and visibility into item returns, and equips brands to deliver a stellar consumer experience across product delivery, issue resolution, and returns. It also brings the best of the B2C customer experience to B2B through Convey’s excellence in consumer-facing interfaces and customer experience. With project44 and Convey, companies can ensure they’re delivering the customer experience and workflow they’re used to in their personal lives as consumers using their smart phones.

LM: Have the companies worked together in the past? If so, in what capacity?

Compain: We’ve had several joint clients benefit from using both project44 and Convey’s technology for real-time visibility from raw materials to the front doorstep. We know that the combined solutions are valuable because we’ve seen first-hand how clients benefit from the combination of the two solutions.

LM: What are the main benefits of this deal for p44's customers? What does Convey provide, or offer, that was needed, or missing?

Compain: The addition of Convey provides project44’s customers with broader capabilities covering more of their supply chain with more functionality, as well as the ability to enhance both the consumer and B2B customer experience. This brings tremendous value to our customers in at least 4 key areas:

The acquisition extends multi-modal visibility to the last mile, including returns for project 44 customers. Companies use Delivery Experience Management to gain visibility from raw material to consumer door—at the LTL, parcel, and courier level. Consumers receive a superior experience from their brand of choice.

It also enhances customer experience by providing the same managed and superior consumer delivery experience capabilities in eCommerce to the much larger B2B market. Convey serves as a brand’s face to consumers in pre-purchase, tracking, alerting, shipping resolution, and feedback. This excellence in consumer-facing interfaces and customer experience will help project44 customers better serve and delight their customers.

Third, added capabilities from Convey, including the ability to resolve parcel delivery issues through automated customer communication, bolster project44’s suite of existing Workflow Applications and APIs for pre-shipment activities such as Tender and Rating, as well as Collaboration, Appointment Scheduling, and Slot Booking The result is that shippers and 3PLs can now spend less time working manually and more time working intelligently on their core business.

Finally, the combination of project44 and Convey ‘s AI extends predictive ETAs and dynamic transit times to ecommerce as dynamic Estimated Delivery Dates (EDD). EDDs are instantaneously populated onto websites as consumers add products to their shopping cart online.

LM: What are the main competitive advantages of this deal, from a p44 perspective?

Compain: The acquisition establishes project44 as the global leader in modern digital supply chain technology powering the world’s largest businesses. Project44 is now not only the leader in the last mile, but also in customer experience by virtue of the B2C customer experience prowess that is now available to B2B. We continue to move far beyond visibility with pre-purchase and post-purchase capabilities as well as Full Shipment Lifecycle and Workflow solutions to equip companies to deliver both products and a great experience to consumers in the face of disruption and uncertainty.

Convey’s choice is also further evidence that project44 is a dominant next-generation technology company and the go-to destination for supply chain’s greatest minds and technology. Project44's platform will catapult Convey applications and data to the European and Asian markets, as well as expand Convey to project44’s B2B market, which is 3x bigger than the Consumer market.